The Trench Cat of Ypres - 1917-1918

<p><em style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>In the mud and the madness they built a kingdom too small for the war to see.</em></p><p></p><p><strong style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>Ypres Salient 1917.</strong></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>Private Tommy Finch buys a scruffy ginger cat for a shilling.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>Officially she is a ratter meant to keep the trenches free of vermin. Unofficially she becomes something else entirely: a silent companion in the mud and terror of the Western Front an early warning system for shellfire and gas and a small living responsibility in a world dominated by death.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>When the cat-Penny-gives birth to kittens in a captured trench the fragile family becomes a secret project for Tommy's section a quiet act of care against the vast indifferent machinery of war. But in an army governed by discipline and necessity such attachments are dangerous. Orders are given. Choices narrow. What can be protected and at what cost?</span></p><p></p><p><em style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>The Trench Cat of Ypres</em><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)> is a spare deeply grounded story of the First World War. Set entirely within the trench systems of Belgium it tells a small story about unofficial lives lived alongside soldiers-lives rarely recorded easily erased and fiercely held onto all the same.</span></p>